1. Take those disks they
give you and put them in a safe place. Keep them where you will
be able to find them. If you have more than one PC, label them to keep
them separate. Some manufacturers do not ship the disks anymore, you
have to burn the DVDs. Do not put this off.
2. Keep a copy of
your warranty with your disks. Examine your warranty to see what it covers. Read
the fine print. Go into the ownership of this new PC with an exit strategy.
3. Now you can take your new PC out of the box and set it up. Install
an antivirus program. Setup a firewall and patch windows. For
more information, go to
Malware
Prevention.
4.
Ninite is a nice
website for setting up a new PC. If you do not have programs such as
iTunes, Picasa, Open Office or Adobe Acrobat Reader already installed
on your system, you can download any or all of these in one easy step.
5. Change Power Options in Control Panel to suit
you.
6. Create a strong password for yourself. Turn on the screen saver
and where it says "On resume, display Welcome Screen" check this box. I have
read a number of hacker manuals and the largest obstacle to someone trying to
access your PC is a strong password.
7. Next, you need to determine
how you are going to move the data from your old PC to your new PC. For about
$79 after rebates, you can get an external USB hard drive. You can attach this
drive to your old PC and copy the data to it. You will find a lot of your data
in the "C:\Documents and Settings" folder.
8. If you have children,
you should consider installing some parental control program.
